This time, the life-line has been offered to the ex-president by BNP joint secretary general and son of the prime minister, Tareque Rahman, who together with his crony, the state minister for home affairs, Lutfuzzaman Babar, brokered the deal to bring Ershad into the ruling alliance ahead of the upcoming elections.

On the surface, the overture towards the ex-president would seem to make good political sense. Ershad's Jatiya Party accounted for 7.5 per cent of the popular vote and 14 seats in parliament in the 2001 elections, and claims a significant presence in up to 50 constituencies, predominantly in the greater Rangpur area.

However, a closer look would suggest that bringing Ershad into the fold might ultimately back-fire on the ruling alliance and hurt more than it helps.

The first reason to think this is that, any way you slice it up, reaching out to the discredited ex-president smacks of desperation and suggests that the ruling alliance is seriously concerned about its sinking popularity.

In 2001, the BNP by itself won 193 seats (216 with the rest of the alliance) and the alliance was able to garner 47 per cent of the popular vote. In the run-up to the upcoming elections, the BNP has long claimed that it was in a commanding position and that it was confident of returning to power in a repeat landslide.

Well, clearly not.

The second reason is that the move smacks of opportunism. This is almost unfair to the BNP since it implies that the AL-led opposition would under no circumstances have made a similar deal with Ershad, and that this is indeed the case is far from certain.

Nevertheless, whether the AL would have acted in a similarly opportunistic manner is only conjecture. It is hard fact that the BNP has done so, and the AL will emerge enhanced in the public mind and the BNP diminished due to this.

Of course, the opprobrium that will attach to the BNP is in direct proportion to how much Ershad is ultimately able to demand to keep him in the fold. So far, the quoted price of the dropping of the 16 cases against him, 50 seats to contest for the JP, and the presidency, seems pretty steep, and is unlikely to do the BNP much good.

The next point to consider is whether adding the JP will upset the dynamics of the existing coalition. In fact, no need for conjecture here: it already has. No sooner had the details of the deal hit the headlines, than the Jamaat-e-Islami went on record as being unhappy with the deal. As well it might.

The Jamaat had been hoping for allocation of between 50 and 60 seats (it received 30 in 2001, out of which it won 17) for the upcoming election, but if Ershad demands 50 seats to bring the JP into the alliance, then this will eat into the Jamaat share, as there is no way the BNP can part with some 100 seats.

The Jamaat is especially disenchanted with the JP deal as it had had high hopes of making inroads into JP strongholds in the north of the country where it believes that it is the stronger of the two parties.

In fact, bringing the JP into the fold is likely to throw the already fractious ruling alliance even further into disarray. There is now a good chance that in whatever seat the BNP allocates to an alliance partner there will be two rebel candidates, the overlooked BNP candidate and one from either the Jamaat or the JP.

If the anti-AL vote is split three ways, then this could spell disaster for the BNP-led alliance. The 14-party alliance would have perhaps preferred for the JP to remain independent and thus split the anti-AL vote, but the way things stand now, there is every chance that the anti-AL vote will remain fractured.

The fact that the Jamaat emerges as the biggest loser from the addition of the JP to the alliance is significant. Not only will the JP eat into the Jamaat seat allocation, the addition of the JP may also serve to diminish Jamaat influence over the alliance. The question to now consider is whether the BNP reaching out to Ershad portends a rift between the Jamaat and BNP that might lead to the Jamaat leaving the alliance.

Such a move might be very well received outside the country. The US had for years identified the Jamaat as a "moderate Muslim" party that it wished to reach out to and cultivate, and its diplomats lost no opportunity to laud and lionize the party.

However, the recent evidence of links between the Jamaat and the more extremist elements within the Islamist movement in Bangladesh might have finally inclined actors such as the US to conclude that this is a party it can no longer do business with, hence the need for the BNP to disengage from it. The problem for the BNP then becomes how to replace the Jamaat votes that brought it to power in 2001. Enter the ex-president.

However, to my mind, the most suspect element of the deal from the point of view of the BNP is the fact that the JP, which only has localized support in pockets of the country, cannot really hope to be a long-term replacement for the Jamaat, which has support in more or less all 300 constituencies, and provided the margin of the 4-party alliance victory in scores of seats in 2001.

Of course, it is not a done deal. Either side could still back out. However, even if the deal is ultimately not consummated, it is possible that the BNP has done itself some very real electoral damage due to the now indelible perception that it is prepared to do anything to win.

The final question to consider is whether this slap in the face of the Jamaat signals a division in the BNP between the prime minister, who has long been opposed to Ershad and is known to be close to the Jamaat leadership, and her son, with the inference that the Ershad deal indicates that Tareque is gaining ascendance.

To me the most interesting aspect of the deal is the fact that it was brokered by Tareque Rahman and that it is so clearly harmful to the interests of the Jamaat. Perhaps what we are seeing is the first step in a long-term BNP strategy to side-line the Jamaat and that this effort signals that Tareque Rahman is beginning to make his move.

Where it will all end is anyone's guess. But stay tuned, the action is only starting.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.